Peru bourse to triple turnover by next year - chairman

LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Daily turnover on Peru's stock
exchange should triple next year with the help of measures
including tax breaks and cuts to transaction costs, the bourse's
chairman said as the country strives to avoid an exodus of
foreign investors.

The $17 billion stock exchange has come under pressure to
ramp up liquidity after index provider MSCI said last month it
was seeking investor input on reclassifying the Lima-based
bourse as a "frontier market".

The South American country is keen to avoid slipping into
that segment - a set of smaller and less liquid economies - and
estimates such a reclassification may spark a flight of as much
as $5 billion of foreign investor money.

Bourse chairman Christian Laub said daily turnover -
currently at $8-10 million - should rise to $20 million to $30
million a day in 2016.

"Next year is going to be tough - we will have the Fed in
the U.S. raising rates, we will have volatility from China, we
are going to have elections in Peru, so all those things are
tough things to cope with, but we can do this ... the numbers of
the economy are quite strong," he told Reuters on the sidelines
of an investor meeting in London.

Peru has tax breaks coming into effect early next year, and
it is working on cutting the transaction costs to encourage
trade.

Laub said the bourse was also in talks with companies and
investors on how to boost turnover, while it plans to launch a
futures market in 2017 and also allow algorithmic trading.

"We are throwing open all the doors, and we will see what
happens."

Around 20-30 percent of shares listed on the
mining-dominated stock exchange are held by foreign investors,
estimated Laub. He is also hoping to see more initial public
offerings, with IC Power Ltd - a subsidiary of Israel
Corporation Ltd - expected to debut in November as
part of a dual New York/Lima listing.

Around $1.6 trillion are benchmarked against MSCI's emerging
market indexes, in which Peru has a weighting of 0.38 percent as
of mid-August. In comparison, just $13.3 billion is benchmarked
to the MSCI frontier market indexes.

Peru's select index has tumbled around 30
percent since the start of the year, compared to a 14 percent
fall in MSCI's broadest emerging market benchmark.
(Reporting by Karin Strohecker; Editing by Jussi Rosendahl)